Section 5

5. We are asked to believe, then, it will be objected,
that if one
man has been happy from first to last, another only at the
last, and a
third, beginning with happiness, has lost it, their shares are equal?

This is straying from the question: we were comparing the happy
among themselves: now we are asked to compare the not-happy at the
time when they are out of happiness with those in actual
possession of
happiness. If these last are better off, they are so as men in
possession of happiness against men without it and their advantage
is always by something in the present.